Số đề ticket number 984430 yields a magenta fish contorting atop a ghostly image of an apartment high-rise in Tân Phú in “The Lottery of Forgotten Dreams – Topographies of the Unseen,” an art project by photographer Christian Berg. The experimental project, available to view in full online, employs computer technology to combine photography, numerology, and mythology and playfully reimagine how one visualizes Saigon.
The image produced by lottery ticket No. 984430
The process to achieve the surreal images is relatively straightforward. Berg purchased 100 vé số tickets from local vendors and created an algorithm to randomly assign a fixed and repeatable number to coordinates on a map of Saigon, the city he has called home for nearly 20 years. He then traveled to the locations and and took a single photo with the rule that he wasn’t to get off his motorbike. The last two digits of each lottery ticket would produce an AI-generated animal inspired by Albrecht Dürer's famous 16th-century works.
“The Lottery of Forgotten Dreams – Topographies of the Unseen” online interface.
Selecting Dürer, a fellow German, was meaningful to Berg for several reasons. While he first considered using Đông Hồ paintings, he said being mindful of cultural appropriation and his positioning as an outsider was important. Moreover, Dürer was one of the first artists to produce and sell prints of his work, providing a fruitful entry point for the discussions of art, commerce, technology, and ownership that exist at the forefront of current-day discussions of creative production. In addition to selecting an animal, the algorithm Berg designed uses the vé số number to select a color and 3D spatial orientation after pixilation. The resulting images aim to offer aesthetic intrigue while suggesting the overlap of the spiritual world and the tangible one via số đề’s relationship with numerology and cosmic beliefs.
Images corresponding to lottery numbers 359927, 521951, 233240 and 485496 (clockwise from top left).
“Once you make the game, you can make your own house rules,” Berg told Saigoneer of the two-year project. He thus tinkered with the map so it disallowed certain coordinates that would send him too far afield or into the middle of the ocean. Similarly, he weighted certain locations to ensure that the visually diverse center of the city would receive more attention than the somewhat homogeneous outskirts.
“The Lottery of Forgotten Dreams” comes as a logical next step after Berg’s “All the Places I have Lived” project. For that one, he trained AI on photographs he had taken of all the Saigon neighborhoods he has called home and then had the computer generate images for each. The glitches and errors, including impossible shadows, nonsense signage, and illogical physics, speak to the fallibility of memories as well as falsehood’s place in feelings of nostalgia.
Two photographs from “All the Places I have Lived.”
“Stop playing it safe,” Berg’s mentor advised as he was formulating the project as part of his PhD coursework at RMIT Melbourne’s School of Art. For the majority of Berg’s time in Saigon, he has practiced conventional photography as a journalist, commercial photographer, and lecturer at RMIT Vietnam. This PhD program allowed him to go beyond his comfort zone and discover what he could learn via experimentation and adoption of new, sometimes radical techniques and schemes. Particularly, the system he devised forced him to act counterintuitively and put together ideas and images that he normally wouldn’t, and in the process discover new means of creative convergence.
In its application of AI, the project reflects Berg’s larger approach to technology. While an ardent supporter of human creativity and credit, he says one cannot just shut themselves off from the existence of new technologies. He explains to his students that “The hardest and most important lesson is to be curious about the world,” and that “saying no outright is not the approach of a curious mind.”
“The Lottery of Forgotten Dreams – Topographies of the Unseen” as featured at the RMIT's Vietnam Festival of Creativity & Design.
The place of AI in art is and will continue to be the subject of intense debates. Projects like “The Lottery of Forgotten Dreams – Topographies of the Unseen” serve as not only examples of what can be done, but also how curiosity is driving artists to play with it.
